


good

by boysbackintown



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cass as Batgirl, Character Study, Gen, Healing, Multiple characters explored but with a focus on cass + jason, Muteness, Past Brainwashing, Past Child Abuse, young justice + pre52 verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 08:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18752389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boysbackintown/pseuds/boysbackintown
Summary: He says nothing. He does nothing.“It’s like they erased him completely,” Oracle says.Cass disagrees.





	good

**Author's Note:**

> hope you like random pre52 references sprinkled in with a severely canon divergent young justice. i just wanted to use what they did to jason. 
> 
> i also really liked cass's batgirl run from what i read. would recommend the read. and i always wanted to do a cass + jason story. i always felt like their dynamics could have been really interesting. they're even the same age.

She loved the stars. Her teacher would carry her in his arms as he would climb up the roof. She kept her head pressed against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart and the rush of his blood through his veins. He would say with the gravel of his voice, her favorite story:

_she was an oracle but they didn’t believe cassandra. this was her curse, after angering the gods._

There must have been some moral to the story. Cassandra would think about it at night years later, turning a glossy picture of David Cain’s scowling face in her hands. Perhaps something about not trusting authority, because then they would surely betray you. Maybe it was to stay away from boys. Maybe it was a teacher attempting to entertain a child and there was, truly, no lesson here.

Then she would remember her teacher— her father, as it turned out— steadying a gun at the side of her face, pulling the trigger every time she flinched.

 _Good_ , he says when she finally stopped.

Everything is a lesson, Cassandra Cain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her new team is different but there are still many, many lessons.

The red haired woman— Barbara— teaches her out to speak, how to read, how to sign for the days when her throat feels like it is warped from too much use.

Cassandra spends hours alone, in front of the mirror, shaping her hands into expressions she knows deep down the _feeling_ of, if not the words for.

Barbara also goes by Oracle and it must have been fate. Cassandra once brings this up, startling a cynical, broken laugh out of her new teacher. She sees the darkness casting over Barbara’s green eyes and the tightness at the corner of her lip and Cassandra knows that she touched upon a memory before Barbara's attack.

“Yeah. Used to use the whole Cassandra thing to sum up my entire tenure at Batgirl.”

Cassandra blinks and then makes a _o_ with her mouth to indicate her surprise. Barbara is so competent, demanding respect out of gods seemingly several feet taller than her. Barbara sits up against her chair, posture straight and head held high, and she seems bigger than Superman.

“Batman and my dad didn’t really take me seriously for a long time. I use to point out attacks all the time and he would  _never_ just listen to me,” she smirks suddenly, clearly forced and faked, as she wags the mouse of her computer playfully. She is a good actor but Cassandra is trained in ways that looks past lies. “Now, B has to play nice or I’ll leak all of his sex tapes.”

Cassandra wrinkles her nose.

“Kidding. No one deserves to be subjected to that.”

Barbara speaks of Batman with fondness but frustration, clashing together in vivid, complex ways. This is a common theme— she sees it in Nightwing, in Robin, in Spoiler.

Cassandra wishes to see Batman’s home, to be able to read him better. He trusts her, she realizes, but he does not think that Bruce is important. Batman believes that their shared aptitude for fighting is bonding enough. That Cassandra is so beyond human interaction that Bruce Wayne would mean nothing to her.

But Cassandra lives with Barbara, nestled in a Clock Tower. She sees people— families— every day now on the streets of Gotham. She knows she is missing something and Batman does not realize that he hurting her.

When he is still, Batman projects sturdiness and  _coldness_. But when he moves, he is so graceful and purposeful. Heroic, even. It is enough emotional whiplash that it makes Cassandra want to lay down.

“That’s Batman for you,” Robin says sardonically.

Tim is sweet. He is baby dear soft. He attempts to puff his chest, to make himself cold and calculating like Batman. Cassandra sees cunning— cunning is often bad. But Robin’s cunning holds hands with kindness.

She often wants to squeeze his cheeks too, he is so sweet. Cassandra does not touch people often, but on the rooftop and chasing each other's tails, his cheeks are bright red and she does so.

“ _Aaah!_ ” He rubs his face, looking wounded. She sees the glimpse of a pout before he tucks his lower lip underneath his top teeth in shame of his childish outburst.

“Adorable! _So fuckin’_ adorable.” Stephanie laughs and reaches out to grab his other cheek.

Cassandra is addicted to Stephanie. Stephanie, with her curly yellow hair and bright laugh and rough voice makes Cassandra feel like she is discovering something new every day. Stephanie is patient, holding Cassandra’s hand through each day, waiting until she is comfortable to keep going. Food courts at the mall, movie theaters, amusement parks. 

They hang upside down in the playground’s _monkey bars_ , swinging uselessly. Robin is doing cartwheels in the near distance, practicing a movie that his predecessor is teaching him.

“We’re like that scene in _Spider-Man_ ,” Stephanie mumbles.

“Huh?” Cassandra says.

“Nothing,” Stephanie hides her face. Cassandra can read Stephanie's embarrassment and affection— it’s enough to make her chest feel full. Cassandra, for the first time in her life, stops trying to read another person. She isn't sure why but she is flustered.

They swing, upside down, in the moonlight of the playground a little bit longer.

“Hello girls! I see you caught those playground bullies that were giving Two Face a run for his money.”

“Nightwing,” Cassandra says. She smiles behind her mask, even though Nightwing cannot see her. She reaches out touch his face and he leans down, bumping his forehead against the tip of her fingers.

“Hey there Cass.”

Dick moves like her. He does not overthink like Robin, he is not shaky like Stephanie, he is not cold like Batman. But he is also free.

Cassandra does not feel free.

 

 

 

 

 

Weeks later, as she sees Tim, Stephanie, and the girl with arrows work together, she tells Dick she also wants to fight.

Dick presses his lips together tightly. “Don’t you want to settle down a bit?”

Barbara has been trying to let her be a teenager but they do not understand that the life of crime and war is not something she was introduced to a holding hand like Dick or Tim. It was built into her DNA— a product of two warriors who came together for the sole purpose of creating a child who can destroy.

“I’m a fighter,” she pauses and then says, helplessly. “I fight.”

“Cass, you—“

“I am,” she says with finality.

 

 

 

 

 

Dick must have told Batman, because Batman takes her on a rare outing as Bruce the next day. He wears a turtle neck and a black coat. He looks fragile.

Cass tells him this and he huffs a laugh. “I guess I am.” It is bizarre to see. His eyes crinkle a bit and his lips twitch in a way that make his whole face change. The sweep of his dark hair makes him look young. He is not covered in the armor of Batman at all.

They walk to the back of the manor, down into the gardens that Alfred cares for meticulously. Alfred is spraying roses, bowing his head in respect as they pass. Cass knows the older man does not know what to make of her— she isn’t like the other broken children of the manor.

They walk through the garden, the maze of lush green leaves and roses, to the headstones of the Wayne cemetery plots.

She knows the story, seen the sepia somber face of a small Bruce in newspaper clipping on Oracle's wall.

But he does not stop at his parents’ grave.

He turns to another headstone, a small one. It has a statue of an angle crying over it.

“Happy birthday kid,” Bruce says.

Cassandra cannot read the words on them. There are not a lot of them. Just three big words, followed by two middle sized one. And then numbers.

“The spaces means the start of another word,” Cassandra mumbles unhelpfully. She is thinking out loud, to which Bruce hums in agreement.

“J-A-S-O—,” she pauses. “M?”

“N,” Bruce quietly corrects.

“Jah-son?” She tries, landing on the _n_ hard.

“Jay-sun,” He says, gentle in ways that she knows that Tim, Stephanie, and maybe even Dick would be shocked by.

“Who?” She asks.

Bruce looks at the grave for a long moment and Cass almost stumbles back, struck the impossible sadness that envelopes him like darkness gathers around Batman. His eyes are red at the bottom from not blinking for so long.

“He was Robin before Tim,” he says.

“Like…Dick?” She is not sure how to take the news.

“Yes. Like Dick. The uniform in the cave was his old uniform.”

Another boy. Another member of her new…family? And he is gone.

Worse that that. David Cain trained Cassandra to read people’s secrets. _They have them tucked in their limbs, their eyes, their joints, little girl._ Yet this boy seemed to have been entirely erased out of them. Scrubbed, leaving no traces.

She shivers, even though its summer and warm.

“Why does no one talks about him— ?”

“He would have been eighteen today,” Bruce interrupts her. “He loved cars and girls and getting into fights. Neapolitan ice cream and the color green. And most of all, he loved the thrill of being Robin.”

They are still for a long moment.

“But he was brash. Impulsive. Headstrong. Never looking before he leapt. I knew that, but I didn’t stop him because he wanted it so _badly_ ,” Regret coasts Bruce’s words. “He wanted too much to prove something. Maybe if I’d put an end to his attempt, he’d be getting ready to go to college—“

“Me,” Cassandra says suddenly. “You are warning me.”

“Yes,” Bruce agrees. “Because it’s not too late for you. You don’t have Jason’s faults, per say, but having a normal life is not a—“

“I will never…have a normal life,” She starts. She studies Bruce’s face for a long moment before looking back at the remains of the boy. “And this…is cruel.”

“What?” Bruce looked tired before but now he seems caught off guard.

“You are,” she struggles for the words but she needs to get them _out._ “You are using him—“ she points to the ground. “— to punish me.”

“Punish you? Cass, that’s not what I am—“

“No, not punish _me._ Punish Jay-sun. Jason.”

Bruce steps back as she slapped him. “I don’t understand what you mean. Punish Jason? He was Batman’s partner.”

“Hurting his name after he’s gone,” she says, setting her jaw.

He’s Batman now, a stoicism settling on his feature. “I,” he clears his throat. “I loved Jason. But I am aware of his faults. To point them out isn’t disrespectful to his name.”

“Saying I’ll be the same. Scaring me.” Cass insists.

“I am trying to protect you,” Batman grounds out.

“I am good.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” he sounds indignant. Like the little sepia, somber boy he was so many years ago.

“No.” Cass doesn’t know why she is angry exactly, but she does know she was wronged here. Both her and the second Robin.

She leaves Batman alone in the cemetery.

 

 

 

 

 

“I always hated that fucking case,” Barbara says when Cassandra tries to bring up Jason. Oracle refuses to talk more, instead handing her an improved version of her costume. “Suit up— Tim’s team needs you. Maybe you can usurp him as team leader.”

 

 

 

 

 

"Name?" Cassandra says, feeling exhausted after a night of trying to slow down for her fellow teammates. She likes them, but they waddle across the roofs like children. She had the catch the red one multiple times. "I need a name."

"Ah yes, your  _nom de guerre_ ," Barbara rubs her chin. Then she grins. "How about Batgirl?"

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting Lady Shiva was a disappointment that Cassandra could have gone her entire life without.

All her mother wants to do is _fight, fight, fight._

She wants to fight to the death. She was to beat people. She wants to be beaten.

Cassandra cannot read any other desires out of her.

As they fight, Nightwing is tackling one of the other bodyguards. He has a sword, which clashes against Nightwing’s batons. Electricity crackles terrifically but the mook does not startle like Dick is used it.

Instead, the sword slices against Nightwing’s side, causing him to yell.

It is so shocking that Cass is caught off guard. Lady Shiva punches her across the face, making her skid across the platform of the assembly hall.

Cass knows it will be an ugly bruise. Maybe Tim can use his disguise makeup to cover it. He is better at it than Stephanie— the tones of his skin matches hers. They both have similar features but Cass isn’t sure where her mother hails from. Until now.

“Chinese, but born and raised in Detroit,” her mother said flippantly. “Go Tigers.”

“Deee— _tro—_ it?” She repeats and flips back in shock as Sandra Wu-San _keeps fighting._

“Nope. _Det. Troyt_. Repeat it.”

Cassandra repeats it and gets congratulated for her correct pronunciation with a fist across her jaw.

“Come on, try _harder!_ ”

“I do not…want to fight.”

“Not interested, Carolyn!”

“It’s _Cassandra!”_

Lady Shiva blinks, suddenly in shock. She is surprised she said the wrong name, Cass realizes. But she does not have time to figure out the significance. She grabs her mother’s arm and toss her over shoulder in a rather sloppy takedown.

Before Cass can see the surprise more clearly, Shiva's expression melts in a bland gaze. 

“You are boring,” Cass says slowly. “I’m glad I don’t know you.”

Shiva doesn’t seem to be interested in what she had to say. Instead she has a little smile, like she is proud of her.

It makes Cass feels unbearably lonely and unbearably sick.

 

 

 

 

 

Later, Dick tries to comfort her but his face is contorted in pain as he holds his side.

“I’ve seen that man before. He’s with al Ghul. He barely reacts like a person. Like a—”

“Robot,” Cass suggests.

“Robots emote more than this guy. Now catch me before I swoon, little lady.”

 

 

 

 

 

The mysterious masked man is added to the list of unknown enemies connected to al Ghul and possibly, the larger enemy. 

“I’ve seen him before,” Stephanie mumbles. “He just stands around Talia, doing nothing.”

“Talia’s new flame?” Dick jokes lightly, flinching as Tim wraps his bandage tightly. “She has a type. No personality.”

“You’re lucky Bruce isn’t here, love,” Barbara mumbles as her fingers dance across the keyboard.

“Your dome is my one safe place,” Dick groans as he lied back against the couch, closing his eyes. Cass reaches out, pressing her hands to a part of his shoulder where it is aching the most. Dick sighs happily, head collapsing against her arm. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ra’s al Ghul's daughter is scary in ways Cassandra is not use to.

She fights Talia— cunning, but the real definition of cunning. A cruel cunning, beautiful with a sword. Cassandra dodges and she wonders if it is her biological mother’s blood in her that makes her such a vicious fighter because Talia al Ghul lets out a surprised gasp when Cassandra aims for her neck.

The woman falls and before she can whip out a knife, Cassandra breaks her thumb. It is harsh and messy, but necessary because Robin is in trouble.

Talia scowls, blood soaking her teeth. As she hurls insults, Cassandra finally sees the remains of change in her body.

“You had a child,” She interrupted al Ghul’s tirade.

“Do I seem pregnant to you?” She sounds annoyed, but annoyed the way Barbara gets when Nightwing is being difficult. It is so normal sounding and it is strange to hear from such a woman.

“Not _now_ ,” Cass says, also annoyed. “Six….seven months ago?”

“Try nine,” The woman admits, tilting her head in curiosity. “How did you know?”

“I….just know things,” Cassandra says with a toss of her hands and knocks the woman out. She feels guilt for breaking the thumb of a new mother but realizes that Tim is still being accosted by Nyssa al Ghul.

Nyssa is already tired by the time Cass arrives and with the both of them, they secure her in a strange coffin-like cage. She screams at them in outrage while Robin stumbles in Cass’s arms in exhaustion.

“ _Not fun,_ ” he informs her.

“Rooftop tag is better,” she agrees.

They slump together, Cass waiting for Tim to steady his breath.

Unfortunately, she hears the sliding sound of a blade being sheathed.

It is a man. He is tall, with broad shoulders. He wears a hooded jackets that clings to him. He wears a mask and goggles that covers his face, covering his identity completely.

Cass sees a man, but the slimness of his chest and face indicates that he is young.

It is the masked man who sliced Nightwing’s side the week earlier.

Cass hisses.

Tim curls his figures in her arm, growling as he tries to amp himself up.

But instead,

the man stumbles towards them, hands reaching out like a child.

“Raah—“ he says. “Raaaah—o—”

He stumbles over a rock. The sleeves of his arm are red with blood, dripping as he walks. He does not seem to notice.

“Raaah! Raaaah! _Bin!_ ”

She is not sure why she does it but Cass runs to him before he falls.

She catches the man and turns him in her arms. He is shaking and he seems so very little like this. 

Robin runs behind her, breathing heavily. “Why did he-- what does he want from me?”

The man’s head stirs against her neck and the red eyes of his mask sets on Robin. “Miiiii— _miiiiiine_.“

Tim lets out a startled grunt. “Buddy, I’m not—“

“Robin,” The man says and he sounds like a boy, a child. He sounds heartbroken.

“Jason,” Cass decides. The man passed out and interestingly enough, so does Tim.

 

 

 

 

 

Tim won’t stop pacing. It’s rather annoying.

“Stop,” Cass demands. Tim stills for a second, before walking even faster. He has a bandage wrapped around his head, making the tufts of his silk hair flay out. He looks like a bunny.

Batman had stormed through the doors the second Tim called it in at the Tower medic center. Martian Manhunter followed, looking grim.

Barbara won’t stop calling but Cass is too rattled to pick up.

“How is he still alive? Was he always alive? Did the Joker fake his death? Jason never stopped chattering— why can’t he talk now?”

“You knew him?”

Tim pauses, looking pale. “I mean. No. But like, in my mind, he talked a lot.”

Cass tilts her head.

“Look, you think they keep things from you. They keep it from me too. No one talked to me about Jason.”

He collapses in the seat next to her.

“The only reason I have any idea about him is because I followed him well into my middle school years. I saw how he talked and cursed villains out and laughed. But when I first became Robin, _nobody_ talked about Jason. But the tension was still there. And, well, after that, it was fill in the blanks for me.”

Tim swallowed, tangling his fingers together. “I mean, Dick only talked about him so he can tell me to be careful. But it was more like alluded to.”

“Batman did the same thing.”

“Right. It’s their thing. And Jason was closer to Oracle than Nightwing anyways. They have a lot of pictures together in her room. She once spent an afternoon for me about Jason. But that’s it.” Tim looks up, his lower lip trembling. “It’s like a puzzle piece and everyone I care about isn’t interested in helping me figure it out.”

“You…talk to the case don't you.”

“Yeah. I know, it’s a little morbid.”

“Morbid?”

“Creepy.”

“Yes.”

It is then that Nightwing crashes into the lobby, his copper skin greyed from his wound and stress. “Robin, _report_.”

“The second Robin is alive,” Tim says, the tears in his throat from before suddenly gone.

Nightwing runs his fingers through his black hair, making him look crazed.“ _What do you mean?”_

“Jason’s alive.” Tim shrugs. “Batgirl confirmed it.”

“Batgirl doesn’t even know who Jason is.”

“I do,” Cass corrects.

Dick looks at her like she lost her mind. “Batgirl, your psychic muscle voyeurism doesn’t exactly work with people you _never met._ "

“Nightwing is hysterical,” Cass reprimands, scowling at the wall behind the eldest Robin’s head. Dick has a temper, she can feel it, but he is always more put together than this showing. She doesn’t like it.

“Yes, yes he is!” Nightwing tries the door to the medical floor, cursing loudly when he is shocked by its alien-grade locks. He jumps back, arms flailing to catch his balance before he grabs his arm and side in pain. “Motherfucker, _J'onn let me in_.”

Cass stares at him. His black hair is in disarray, sticking up. The bags underneath his eyes are peaking beneath his crooked black mask. His lips are dried to the point of being cracked, bleeding as he shouts.

Nightwing feels guilty. Cass is bewildered by this discovery.

“Calm down,” she pushes him roughly to a chair and holds him down. She forcibly pets his hair like he is dog, which only inspires one last strangled and scary laugh out of him. Then he is silent, staring at the door into the patient’s room with a scary intensity. 

Hours past before Batman emerges, marching past them without a word. The Martian follows, sighing as he sees that Batman has left him to deliver the news. 

“I would not enter, children. You may…overwhelm…him.”

“So it’s him? It’s Jason?” Robin asks.

“Yes. But he is not well.”

**Author's Note:**

> second chapter will be posted shortly. thank you for reading and please let me know if there is any glaring grammar mistakes.


End file.
